New Years Eve

It looks like another quiet New Years Eve for Cely and I. That's just how I like it though. I can remember some crashingly boring New Years Eve when expectations were high but never reached. Not even close. Like the one time we went to an actual nightclub and were the only ones there over 30, no make that 23. That night ended early.

Tonight we are doing Italian traditions, at least as reported on Rick Steve's NPR travel show. For good luck we are eating lentils (soup) and grapes (separate from the soup). To ensure travel in the new year we plan on touching suitcase handles as the new year arrives.

Adrienne has already celebrated New Years Eve. Her's happened at 8am CST. She worked a flight to Hong Kong. E-mails from her say that this has been one of her best trips. December was a good month for her, a trip to Paris, then Sao Paulo and now Hong Kong.

Easier blogging

It looks like I can now post to this Blog from my blackberry.

John H. Pollitz
Director of Libraries
UW Eau Claire
Eau Claire WI
715-836-4827
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Sent using BlackBerry

I am trying a new thing now as a way to keep my Blog up to date. This should allow me to send messages to my Blog from my Blackberry.


John H. Pollitz
Director of Libraries
UW Eau Claire
Eau Claire WI
715-836-4827
--------------------------
Sent using BlackBerry

Field Trip to the Farm

Last Thursday I went with the Eau Claire Chamber of Commerce Leadership group on an Ag Day excursion. It was surprisingly interesting in a number of ways. We started the day with a talk from the local extension agent about ways to live in a more sustainable manner. He mentioned rain barrels. I really miss the rain barrel I had in Davenport. Here they have classes on how to make them but I just want to get one already to go. Davenport had a program that sold them really cheap. They cost over $100 on the internet.

Our next stop was a huge dairy farm outside of town, Five Star Diary. The farm is a family run operation that milks more that 600 cows daily with another 800 moving in and out of the milking cycles. As you might imagine with so many cows there is a lot of manure created on that farm. What they do with that manure is what makes this farm really unique. They have a huge methane digester operation that takes the manure and through a chemical process extracts the methane, cleans it up and uses it to power a massive generator that puts electricity into the power grid. They estimate that the methane produces enough electricity to power over 600 households. The material that comes out of the digester process doesn't even smell. I know, I walked right by it. They use this stuff for bedding for the cows. The cows need a lot of bedding. It looks like they never move out into pastures and spend their lives in these huge feeding barns. The barns seemed hospitible but are still indoor feedlots. Everything was computerized and very high-tech.

In the afternoon we toured the opposite side of the spectrum. There are a lot of Amish farms around Eau Claire so we were able to tour one of those operations. It was such a contrast from the farm in the morning. Here they milked 14 cows with another 30 in the cycle. The milking barn on the Amish farm had fourteen milking stalls and each had the name of the cow that got milked there. Each stall was customized for an individual cow.The cows weren't in the barn while we were there, though. They were out in the field. It was like seeing how a Midwest dairy farm operated in the early 1900s. As we were leaving the farmers wife and two daughters came out and gave us homemade donuts. There were tons of donuts! They were made without any electicity. I don't have any pictures because the Amish do not want any pictures taken of them.

Adrienne & Alexis

Adrienne came to visit this weekend and she brought Baci with her. So far there haven't been any big fights between Cupcake and Baci. Today we went to Stillwater for a visit. We didn't see Jessica Lange or Sam Sheppard but we did see that they had a Kathe Wohlfardt store. It looks like it is the only Kathe Wohlfardt store outside of Rothenburg ob der Tauber. People told me that Stillwater was a nice place and it was. We walked around downtown and looked at the antique shops and a kitchen store. There was a gelato place that we stopped in and shared a refreshing fruit gelato.

Here's the big news. Alexis got a job. It sounds perfect for her. She is working for Corporate Translations , a translation company with headquarters in East Hartford, Ct. and a branch in Chicago. She started work on Monday then they flew her out to the home office on Wednesday night. She will be working as a project manager, a job much like she was doing for Iverson's in Milwaukee.

Hardacre Film Festival

Friday night Cely and I went to the Hardacre Film Festival in Tipton, Iowa. Probably the most interesting movie we saw was Monster Camp. The documentary told the story of members of a NERO group in Seattle, WA. The group meets regularly in local state parks to escape their daily lives by enacting live action World of Warcraft events. They dress in full costume and makeup as monsters, undead and all forms of characters. It was a poignant movie. A student movie, "The Loneliest Place on Earth", was the most surprising. Done by an undergraduate student at Webster University outside St. Louis, this short film was subtle and sophisticated. I couldn't believe that an undergraduate had done it. I think the best thing about the entire night is just the fact that Tipton can put on such a quality event. We had fun being able to get together with Jim and Maria for such a unique experience.

New Things

I'm trying a new extension for Firefox which I hope will help me write here more often. Got work to do. Bye.

Adrienne's and Alexis' Building

Here is a picture of the building that Adrienne and Alexis live in.

2 Trips to Chicago

Last week we helped Alexis and Adrienne move from Milwaukee to Chicago. It will be a drag not to have a reason to go to Milwaukee as often as we have. It is a great city. Cely and I will just have to make new reasons to visit.

I am anxious to get to know more about Chicago though and expect the girls to find some cool places. Everything went well during the move other than I should have rented a bigger truck. It took all my Von Sydow, Weicker, Graebel..... skills to get everything loaded into it and the van. Actually I had to pull all sorts of stuff out and reload them so that I could fit the futon and Adrienne's bed frame in. Here is what the truck looked like when we arrived in the city. There wasn't much air left in that van. Cely made me laugh, she kept telling everyone that no one else could have gotten everything in that truck. Well, the stuff was in the box, the front seat, the van and two plants went with us back to Eau Claire until we came down this weekend with Baci.

Their apartment is very nice. Here are some pictures I took last weekend. I forgot the camera this week.


This weekend we went back there on Friday night then to the Quad Cities for a wedding on Saturday morning. I drove back to Eau Claire on Sunday and Cely is staying with her Mom for a bit and visiting her cousins. Liz came in from Hawaii for the wedding and Mona is coming in from Colorado at the end of the week. Liz's son Brandon is going to the Olympics again as the goalie for the USA Water Polo team. Watch for him.

On Saturday we went to breakfast at a small bakery that Cely had heard about on the Food Channel. It is called the Angel Food Bakery and is very kitschy just like a lot of the hip restaurants in Chicago. It has a 60's theme with Easy Bake Ovens all over the place. The owner was a potter and is very artistic with her frostings and creations. She makes a twinkie like thing stuffed with marshmallow creme and wrapped in aluminum foil that she calls an airstream. The coolest thing was that it is on the corner of Montrose and Paulina in the Ravenswood neighborhood. That may not be so cool in itself but it means that Drake and Elston is in between it and the Girls' apartment. On the way back we drove by 3909 Drake, the house my dad grew up in and where my Grandmother lived most of her life. They have changed the siding. I remember it as that asphalt shingles. You can still see the garage in the back with the original siding. I got the picture from Google Street View. See if that link works. It was very cool to see that house. Back in the day this angle would have shown "Uncle's" little glasswindow seed starting box on the side of the house. I can't even remember Uncle and Auntie's names. Maybe Nancy will help me with that.

Alexis Graduates from UW Milwaukee

Spring has finally made it to upper Wisconsin. These are two of the trees in our front yard. I'm not sure what they are but they are simply goreous this Spring. We have seen older trees like this and they are spectacular. We have high expectations for these two. The lilacs that line our drive have not fully bloomed yet but the phlox by the side of the house have.

On Sunday Alexis went through commencement in Milwaukee. She received her Masters in German with a translation concentration. Cely and I are very proud.

Natalie's Wedding

June told Cely that the Quad City Times had an announcement of Natalie's wedding in the Sunday paper. In it they mention that the dress was handmade by Alexis. The wedding was last September and held in the chapel on the University of Denver campus.

Springtime in Milwaukee

Friday Cely and I visited the girls in Milwaukee. In keeping with the ways of this winter they treated us to 11 inches of snow. It was an incredible snow. The local TV station went on at 4 in the morning to cover the snowfall. They kept talking about "thundersnow" but it didn't materialize. Too bad. That would have made it especially exciting.

We didn't let it keep us from going to see a good movie. We went to see a great movie at the Oriental, The Counterfeiter, based on the true story of the Nazi's using concentration camp inmates to counterfeit the British pound and later the US dollar. It was a nuanced study of the choices people must make in the most dire of circumstances. The Counterfeiter was one of those that come along too infrequently; one that is sophisiticated and both well written and fascinatingly acted.

The Grotto

Today I drove up highway 61 on my way back from the Quad Cities. That route is shorter than taking the interstate through Rockford and Madison and a little more interesting. The trip takes you through Dubuque, Iowa and a lot of little Wisconsin towns tucked into the rolling hills that frame the Mississippi. Just north of Dubuque about 14 miles after crossing over into Wisconsin is the little town of Dickeyville. Right on the road is this Grotto on the grounds of Holy Ghost Catholic Church. Father Matthias Wernerus the priest of the parish build the grotto out of various types of rocks, glass, petrified wood, geodes, glass, iron and an eclectic mix of oddities from 1925 until 1930. I finally stopped today and took a couple of pictures today. There was still some snow on the ground. There is still some snow here in Eau Claire too.

Xavier, Barack Obama Weekend

Finally something exciting enough happened to get me writing. This weekend Adrienne and Xavier came up to visit Cely and I in Eau Claire. It was a great weekend to visit. Saturday Barack Obama was on the campus of UW Eau Claire for a rally and we had great weather for cross country skiing. Xavier wanted to ski up here, which was great because I probably would have missed going but for his incentive.

The Obama rally was standing room only in Zorn Arena. He was an inspiring orator and the crowd was excited to see him. We waited in line for two and a half hours before we got in. The line spread out from Zorn Arena down past the bridge and the Library, past the dorms and half way up the hill to upper campus. Xavier was pretty excited to see the rally. I thought it was great that Obama came to campus on the very weekend that Xavier visited. And I really wanted to hear Obama talk. I had hoped that we could see him one of the times we were in the QC but this was even better.

On Sunday we went out to Beaver Creek Recreation area to go cross country skiing. I have only gone cross country skiing once before and that was about 30 years ago in Leadville, Co. Beaver Creek was great. It was snowing as we started out and the temperature was in the 20s. A perfect day. Part way through our ski we stopped for a sandwich that Cely had sent with us. Cely stayed home and made lasagna for us when we got home. Adrienne made a special request for the lasagna. There are more pictures from the rally and from our little ski trip on Flickr.